of the _Eon_, through a friend who has influence with the management,
and it was just then I was taken ill with this typhoid fever that has
left me the wreck you see," he said, with a whimsically sad smile. "That
is not the worst, though," he went on, a shadow falling over his
upturned face, "I cannot explain it, although my doctor pretends to. I
had written--oh! say half-a-dozen chapters of this book before my
sickness. As soon as I began to be convalescent, I wanted to amuse
myself by going on with it. I had my plot roughly blocked out, my
characters were entirely distinct in my mind, yet when I took up my pen
again, I found I could not write connectedly. It was simply horrible. I
shall never forget that day. Of course I imagined I should never write
again. I sent for two or three doctors, announced that I had paresis,
and was told that it was madness for a man who had been as ill as I to
attempt any sort of literary work for weeks, if not months. But the
sense that I absolutely could not write preyed upon me. I used to do a
little each day in spite of their orders, but it is only now that I am
beginning to feel the confusion of ideas lessening, and the ability to
present them coherently growing Even yet I only write disconnected parts
of the chapters I had planned. It is--oh! what is that pet word of
phrenologists? _continuity_, that I have not at my command. I suppose
you cannot quite understand the agony of such an experience, never
having gone through it. Only yesterday I tore up thirty pages of
manuscript, and had more than half a mind to burn the whole thing. It is
only the consideration of the possibly great loss to the literary world
that withholds me, you know," he said with a half bitter laugh, throwing
down the ruins of the flowers he had pulled to pieces with his thin,
nervous hands, and rising.
"But I've been an unconscionable bore, even for a valetudinarian, and I
believe they are privileged to tax people's amiability. I hope I havn't
tired you so that you will forbid my coming again. I will promise not to
talk about myself next time," he said, as he turned to go down the path.
I wondered what his book was like, as I lazily watched him cross the
street in the noonday sun, and then I remembered with a twinge of
conscience that I had hardly written a thousand words since I came. This
soft air, redolent of spicy midsummer odors, seemed to produce an
invincible indolence, even of thought. After the struggles of the past
winter, I was feeling the reaction in utter relaxation of will and
purpose. I wondered, were I in Mr. Longworth's place, would I ever write
again, from the mere love of it? Was the end, even if that end were
success, worth the pain of attaining it? And then, fearing to question
myself further, I went to my room and began to write.
Late July was very beautiful in Wauchittic. From the ocean, a dozen
miles distant, was wafted the faintest suggestion of the odor of the
sea, the wide fields of lush pasture seemed to drink the sun. All night
the murmur of the little stream falling over the mill-dam, filled the
dark hours with soft whispers. The low woods, with their glittering
leaves of the scrub-oak, tempted me, and I discovered fairy glades in
their depths, where the grass was thin and pale, and strong ferns grew
about the roots of the trees. Sometimes Mr. Longworth would accompany me
on my trips of exploration, and, happy in our youth and the gladness of
summer, and forgetful of strict conventionality, we would spend long
mornings together, writing and reading in an especially cosy spot at the
edge of the woods back of the farm. Mr. Longworth was growing so strong
that Wilson's position was almost entirely a sinecure, and he spent most
of his time lounging in the one village store, relating remarkable
stories of New York to a circle of open-mouthed idlers. Day by day, I
watched the lessening pallor and the growing health of Mr. Longworth's
face, and saw him visibly gain strength. He could carry all the rugs and
books and writing materials to our sylvan sanctum without fatigue, and
he was so boyishly proud of his health that he used to exhaust himself
with too long walks, for which I administered lectures that he always
received submissively. One warm morning we had spent an hour in writing.
I had grown tired, and throwing down my pen and pad, I left Mr.
Longworth still at work, and strayed out into the field in the sun.
There had been no rain for days, and the locusts filled the air with
their _zeeing_. The wide field was dotted with golden patches of the
arnica blossom, or yellow daisy, as the farmers called it. I wandered
through the hot, knee-high grass, picking handfuls of the broad yellow
suns, then childishly threw them away, and pulled others, with great
heads of sweet red clover, and spears of timothy too. I was so happy. My
whole being was filled with causeless peace and gladness. From time to
time I glanced back to the shade of the oak trees, to the tall, slender
figure, with the dark head bent over the white sheets of manuscript, and
I sang softly a little song for very joy of my life. I looked up to the
deep, cloudless sky, around at the wide stretch of green in the golden
sunlight, then almost unconsciously back once more to the edge of the
woods, where the spread rugs made a tiny home fit for the heart of
summertide. Nor did I guess, even then, which was the dominant note of
this wonderful chord that my life had unconsciously struck. I knew only
that the world was far more beautiful than I had ever dreamed, and still
singing under my breath the little cadence that seemed to fit the day, I
wandered slowly back, leaving a path crushed between the tall, sun-faded
grasses as I went.
Mr. Longworth laid down his work as I approached. A strange, absurd
shyness possessed me, after the weeks of strengthening friendship and
simple good-fellowship, but I held out the great bunch of daisies
playfully to him, as I seated myself on the pile of rugs. He reached
his hand for them eagerly, and buried his face in their sunny depths.
His eyes shone feverishly with his stress of work, and his thin cheeks
were flushed. "You look tired," I said. "You should not write so long."
Thus far, though we had often jested about it, we had never read each
other portions of our work.
"When I get mine half done," I had said, when he begged me to read him a
chapter.
"When I can manage to make a chapter run smoothly to its end," he had
replied laughing, in turn, but now to-day, urged by some necessity for
an absorbing topic into which I could plunge, losing my restlessness, I
insisted that he should read fragments, at least, to me.
He demurred at first. "I have told you how stupid it sounds, these
disconnected bits, little descriptions, detached conversations.
Sometimes I think I shall never use them after all." He fingered the
pages absently.
"No, read it to me as it is," I begged. "I must hear it. I understand,
of course, how it is written."
And so, yielding to my entreaties, he read, while I leaned back against
the tree trunk, listening at first critically, and interested, perhaps,
because it was his work, then with clasped hands and shortening breath,
leaning forward that I might lose no word. A little squirrel scampered
through the undergrowth back of us, and far in another field I could
hear Mr. Hopper's quavering voice, as he called to the haymakers.
Sometimes a leaf rustled, falling to the ground, but it was very quiet.
At last he laid down the leaves, and fixed his dark eyes eagerly on my
face, as if he would read my thoughts, but my eyes were full of tears,
and they were selfish tears. "My poor book!" I said, with a tender
contempt for it.
"Do you mean--?" he began increduously.
"I mean that this is wonderful, and that I know I shall never write
again," I said. "I do not know how it is, but I can read by the light of
your book that you have genius, and that I am a failure. It is well that
something brought it home to me before I wasted any more time." I meant
to speak bravely, but I knew more than this. I knew that, with all my
air-castles shattered, with the knowledge that to him literature was a
pastime, while to me it meant livelihood, I gloried more in his success
than I should in my own, that I was glad that he, and not I, was to have
fame; and in the tumult of new emotions against which I struggled, my
lip quivered, I turned aside my head, and felt, but I did not see, the
hand that touched mine, thrilling me so that I drew away.
"Miss Marriott--Kate--"
"No, no," I cried, facing him with my cheeks crimson, and speaking
rapidly, "I want you to let me send a few pages for a reading to Mr.
----, the editor of ----'s Magazine; he is a friend of mine; he has been
so good to me. You say you have no publisher in view. I am certain he
will take this when it is finished, and you know what that means; it
will make your reputation, and--"
"Ah, but you see, these are only fragments," he said, sadly, regaining
his composure. "Suppose I am never able to weave them properly into the
plot? You cannot know how discouraged I am sometimes."
"Will you not let me send them?" I asked eagerly. "It is quite true that
they are only fragments, but no one could write such things and then
fail of success in elaborating; it is impossible. Come, let us go, it is
nearly dinner-time," I went on, not giving him time to speak, as I began
gathering up the books and rugs. "No, do not talk of my book; it is
over. It was only a fancy of mine. I ought to have known I could not
really write, and it came to me clearly this morning--so clearly! If you
will let me be godmother to yours, that will be a little consolation," I
said laughing, and having now his consent to send his MSS. to Mr. ----,
I hurried him homeward, talking gaily of indifferent topics, and
avoiding the tender, questioning eyes that sought my own.
That there was bitterness in the realization that I had miserably
failed, that my novel was stupid and lacked the elements of interest, I
cannot deny. Why I had not seen it all before, I can never understand,
but this morning, as I compared it with the brilliant and strange play
of fancy that characterized Mr. Longworth's work, I felt it keenly and
conclusively. In the long afternoon hours I spent that day alone with my
manuscript, I learned to face calmly the fact that I must go back to
newspaper work without the vestige of a hope that I should ever write a
readable novel. What it meant to me to arrive at this conclusion no one
will understand who has not had the same hopes and the same downfall,
yet through those hours in the little white-washed bed-room, with the
locust boughs tapping against the window, the memory that I strenuously
put away of that warm clasp, of the new tenderness in the voice that had
called me by my name, softened the sharp pangs of disappointment; and
he, at least, would not fail as I had done.
Toward sunset I laid away my dead book, and went down to the
sitting-room where Mrs. Hopper sat placidly mending. She looked a trifle
anxiously at my reddened eyelids. "Feel well?" she queried, plying the
needle swiftly. "You mustn't let things prey onto your mind," she
admonished, "or you won't get your money's worth of good out of the
place, and besides, Lord! what is there worth worryin' over, any how?
Money ain't worth it, and love ain't worth it," she declared, with a
keen glance at me. "But, there, what _is_ the use of tellin anybody
that? I worried some before I married Pa. I guess it's natural. I
thought, thinks I, 'Mary Ann Bishop, he's years older'n you, 'n' he's
weakly, 'n' there ain't much doubt but what you'll be left a relic'. Now
look, that was ten years ago, and Pa ain't no more out o' slew 'n' he
was then. 'N' then I thought, 'There, he's had one wife.' (Pa was a
widower.) ''N' I expect he'll be always a-comparin' of us.' It ain't
happened once, at least, not out loud, an' oh! how good he was to that
woman! It didn't seem as if he _could_ be as good to his second. It was
all over the place," said Mrs. Hopper laying down "Pa's" calico shirt,
and speaking in low and impressive tones, as befits the subject of
death, "how he bought her a bran-new wig two weeks before she died, an'
he let her be buried in that wig, that cost over thirty dollars! An' as
for a stone! Well, there, he went over to Gilsey's marble-yard to New
Sidon, 'n' picked out a sixty-dollar tomb, 'n' never asked 'm to heave
off a cent! An' that man, Miss Marriott," said Mrs. Hopper, "he'd do
just as well by me as ever he done by her, 'n' I'm contented, 'n' I'm
happy. I can tell you, I'm a believer in marriage," she said, with a
proud smile, as she rose to get tea.
Mr. Longworth brought over a neat package of manuscript that evening,
which I sent, with a letter to Mr. ----. We sat talking on the porch,
watching the moon rise and flood the dew-wet fields with a tide of white
radiance. Occasionally we heard Mr. or Mrs. Hopper in the lamp-lit
sitting-room making brief comments on neighborhood gossip, or the crops,
and then Mrs. Hopper would go on silently sewing, and "Pa," his white
head bent over a "Farmer's Almanac," made long and painful calculations
on a scrap of paper in which he seemed to get much mysterious assistance
from the almanac.
Without, the cool night air touched my face gently. My head was burning
and fevered with the day's emotions, but I felt the infinite peace of
the evening calming me.
"No," I said firmly, "indeed I have decided wisely, Mr. Longworth. I am
going back to my old work cheerfully, and shall never think again of
my--my disappointment. I believe I can easily get work on my old paper,
the "_Courier_," and I have been offered an editorial position on a new
fashion paper, beside my weekly letter to the "_Red Cañon Gazette_.'"
Naturally I did not tell him that I had spent all my savings of a year
on this planned vacation, when I was to finish the book that should
reimburse me.
"You shall not go back to that wretched drudgery," said Mr. Longworth,
in his impetuous, nervous manner. "Do not imagine you are ever to do it
again. Tell me," he said, lowering his voice, and leaning toward me so
that he could see my face, shaded by the vine-hung trellis. "Could you
be happy--"
We heard Mr. Hopper moving around the room uneasily, and instinctively
Mr. Longworth paused.
"Ma," said the old man, a trifle reproachfully, "I'm afraid you don't
try to make it cheerful for them young folks. Why don't you go out and
set for a spell? I guess _I'll_ go."
"Stay where you are, Joseph," said Mrs. Hopper, in loud tones of
disapproval, that were wafted through the open window to us. "Did _we_
want the old folks forever runnin' after us before _we_ was married?"
Mr. Longworth tried not to steal a mirthful glance at me, but he found
it hard to resist. "Oh! pshaw, Ma," replied the old man gently. "There
ain't none of that goin' on. He ain't a marryin' man," and we heard his
slippered feet pattering softly over the oil-clothed entry, and his mild
face beamed on us through the net door, which he held open for a moment
before he came out and seated himself in the rocking-chair.
"Well, now, this _is_ comfortable," he said, with a cheerfully social
air. "I can tell you this is a night for authors. Here's a chance for
poetry!" with a wave of his thin, weather-worn hand toward the peaceful
fields. "Made any this evenin'?" he inquired. "Ain't? well, I guess
you'll never come across a more inspirin' night," he said, with some
disappointment. "I expected likely you'd have some you could say right
off. Fer a plain farmer, I don't s'pose there's anybody fonder'n I am of
verses," he said, musingly. "I b'lieve I told ye 'twas in our family. I
wish you could have met my uncle, Mis' Marriot, died on his
ninety-second birthday, and had writ a long piece on each birthday for a
matter of forty year. That ther man was talented, I tell ye. There
wasn't no occasion he couldn't write a piece onto. Why, the night Ma and
me was married (we was married in Ma's sister's parlor) we hadn't more'n
turned 'round from the minister, 'n before anybody had a chance t'
congratulate us, uncle, he steps right up in front of us, an' sez he:
'Now you are married, an' man an' wife
May you live happy this mortial life,
An' when your days on this earth is o'er
May you both meet together on the evergreen shore.'
"It come to him, jus' come to him that minute, like a flash," said the
old man, reflectively, the pathos of his sweet, tremulous voice lending
unspeakable melody to the preposterous stanza.
Mr. Hopper had evidently settled himself for the remainder of the
evening, and after a time Mr. Longworth bade us good-night, and went
across to the Bangs homestead.
All that night I tossed about on my uncomfortable feather-bed, or
rather, when I found I could not sleep, I rose after a time, and wrapped
in my dressing-gown, I sat by my tiny window, watching the shadows of
the wind-blown locust-boughs on the moonlit grass below, full of the
dreams which are the stuff that romances are made of, and which, though
I had often used them as "material," I had never known myself before;
shy and tender dreams they were, that glorified that summer night, and
kept me wakeful until dawn.
The next day and the next I was ill and feverish, so ill that I could
not rise. Mr. Longworth brought for me great bunches of choice flowers,
for which he must have sent Wilson to the next town of New Sidon, and a
dainty basket of fruit. The third day I rose and dressed toward noon,
and weak as I felt, I decided to walk down to the post-office, for I
thought perhaps the air would do me good, and beside, the mail was never
brought up until after dark, and I longed to find if Mr. ---- had
written me as I expected, about the manuscript. I knew he would be very
prompt with me.
I found several letters in the box for me, and eagerly scanning the
envelopes, I discovered the well-known buff tint, with the red device of
a female figure with a book clasped to the breast, that is the livery
of "----'s Magazine." I tore it open, reading as I slowly walked. Mr.
---- had written as follows, in his hurried hand:
"OFFICE OF ----'s MAGAZINE.
"MY DEAR MISS MARRIOTT:
"I return the MSS. you sent us, and I have no hesitation in saying that
your friend is a genius. In fact, I was so chained by the somewhat wild
and singular style that I sat up most of Tuesday night to go through it
myself.
"Of course in their present disconnected state, the fragments are quite
unavailable to us, but when worked into a story, they ought to make a
success. I hope we shall have the first reading of the completed book. I
understand it is the work of a beginner, but it bears none of the marks
of the novice, and I can but think we have discovered the 'coming
American novelist.'
"By the way, how is your own book coming on?
"Yours in haste,
"---- ----."
I had walked on some distance from the post-office as I read this, for
Mr. ----'s chirography was almost undecipherable, even to one accustomed
to it. I was just folding the letter to replace it in the envelope, when
I heard heavy footsteps hurrying behind me. I turned my head and saw
Wilson, quite red in the face with trying to overtake me. "Beg pardon,
Miss," he said, touching his hat, "I saw you coming out of the office,
and--I'd like to speak to you a minute, if I may."
"What is it?" I asked, somewhat surprised. I stepped back from the path,
and Wilson stooped down awkwardly, and picked a twig from a low bush
that grew by the fence. "Well," he began, drawing a long breath, "I've
been thinking it over, and I've made up my mind to tell you. I expect I
ought to have done it before, but my orders was so strict, and--you see
I'm saving up to get married, and a man hates to lose a good place,--but
that's neither here nor there, Miss, the truth is, I ain't Mr.
Longworth's nurse, and I ain't his valley neither. I'm--I'm his
attendant."
"Well, what of it?" I said, with some irritation. How could Wilson's
absurd distinctions matter to me? What did I care whether he called
himself valet, or nurse, or attendant?
To his credit, be it said that there was no tone of half-exultation,
almost pardonable after my manner of annoyance, as he went on. His
heavy, spatulate finger-tips were stripping the little twig bare of its
leaves. As he continued, I fixed my lowered eyes on that bit of alder. I
remember every tiny, bright brown knot on it, and how one worm-eaten
leaf curled at its edges.
"You see," said Wilson, clumsily, "I mean I was his attendant up to the
Retreat. It was a real high-toned place, and they did not take any
dangerous ones, only folks like him. His people ain't the kind that
stand for price. They've got plenty, and they don't care what they pay.
I dare say you've been in his father's store many a time,--Longworth &
Whittles, one of the biggest and best dry-goods stores on Sixth avenue.
The old gentleman's rolling in gold, and there ain't a nicer lady in New
York City than Mrs. Longworth. You see, it was this way. Young Mr.
Longworth didn't like business, and they sent him abroad to be educated,
and when he come back he just fooled around and went out a good deal,
and finally, he got in with some literary folks. One of his friends took
him to their receptions, and he got it into his head he was going to be
a writer. His folks didn't care, they'd have paid a publisher any price
to take his books if it would have done any good; but finally he took to
shuttin' himself up in his room day and night, writin' all the time,
and it told on him pretty well, for I guess he'd never wrote anything
but cheques before. And then he'd burn it up as fast as he wrote, and
not eat, and not come out o' that room for days at a time. He kept
a-saying it would be all right if it would only fit together but that's
just where it is, it don't any of it fit together. And now he just
writes over and over the same things he wrote a year ago. He don't know
it, he burns 'em up, and then he thinks it's all different. He got so
bad the doctors said he'd be better up to Dr. Balsam's Retreat, where
they could kind of soothe him down, and make him think his health was
out of order, and get his mind off his writing, but he did have a pretty
bad fever up there, an' ever since he thinks he was editor or somethin'
on some paper, and he can tell it off straight as a string. He's all
right about everything else, and if you didn't know about it, you'd
think he was just what he says, sure enough."
"It's pretty near killed his mother. Seems funny; a young fellow with
nothing to do but spend money, getting it into his head to write books!
Well, they said I wasn't to tell anybody, and I _ain't_ told anybody but
you, and I thought as you was a writer, and pretty busy, I guessed you
wouldn't want to waste your time over his book. They say, folks do, that
it's first-rate, as far as it goes; but you see it don't never get any
farther, and it never will. I thought I'd better tell you about it,"
said Wilson, his plebeian, kindly face crimson with a delicate pity that
would have done honor to an aristocrat, and still working assiduously at
the little twig, "I knew you was a genuine writer yourself, and it
seemed a pity for you to take up your valuable time helpin' him on,
about something that can't amount to anything."
May he be forgiven that gentle falsehood!
I looked for a moment at the wide-spread field and distant woodland,
lying green in the peaceful sunshine, at the place grown so dear to me,
that now whirled before my eyes. Far down the road a heavy farm-wagon
creaked its way toward us, in a cloud of white dust.
"You did quite right to tell me, Wilson," I said, turning to go. "No one
shall hear of it from me."
I looked down at the buff envelope from "----'s Magazine," which I had
crushed in my hand, and smoothed it out mechanically, as I went on in
the increasing heat.
It was only August, but my summer was over.
AN AFRICAN DISCOVERY.
"Of course it is very curious; but if you'll pardon me, my dear fellow,
you might as well tell me you had found a philosopher's stone."
Still, the rough glass phial, with odd metal bands around its neck, had
a fascination for me. I picked it up again, and tilted it idly back and
forth in my hand, watching the slimy brown fluid, the color of
poppy-juice, slip along its sides.
Hilyard smoked on imperturbably. The color mounted under his bronzed
skin up to the light rings of his hair; there was a momentary angry
flash in his pale blue eyes, but it was only for an instant.
"Perhaps you would like to try it, since you are so skeptical," he said,
grimly.
"Thanks, I have no wish to poison myself, and I have no doubt it is a
poison; but what I do doubt is the remarkable qualities you claim for
it. How did you come across the vile stuff, anyway?"
Hilyard stretched himself comfortably in his chair, and took his beloved
pipe from his handsome mouth. "Oh! well, you know," he said, lazily, "I
don't claim to be a Stanley by any means, but I did go a good bit into
Africa. I wasn't bent on discovering anything, and I loafed around, and
shot big game when there was any to shoot, and I learned some odd things
from those devils of witch-doctors, as well as a few on my own account.
You remember my old craze for medicine and chemistry?"